From the ancient Greeks until today, the concept of the atom has become more and more obscure. The mathematical framework allows us to predict information about the atom with greater and greater accuracy, but, the world of the atom, the quanta of particles are so strange that it is no longer possible to be able to visualize what we are talking about. The particles seem to have a complete random existence, non-existence quality about them. And yet the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED) is so precise and powerful, it encompasses all of our classical physical laws. The predictions of QED have been verified many times and to a precision of better than one part in a billion. It has such predictive powers that psychics, soothsayers, and prophets can only dream about coming as close. When you delve into the strange world of atoms, you start going crazy and you say things like . . .
